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I saw this image on Facebook yesterday, and it was a powerful message for me, not just as a gay man who has been told many times by people to just stay in the closet because people like to keep thinking we don’t exist, but also as a child abuse survivor who was basically told I’m not allowed to tell my story.

My sister had some guy write a review of my book on Amazon, but it wasn’t just a review, it was an attack on me personally. He said that I am lying to my readers about an abuse that never occurred. How does he know? He wasn’t even there. But he told me in his review to change the genre of my book from autobiography to fiction because it’s all lies.

I will never be bullied into silence. I’m not going to remove my book from Amazon, which by the way you can read for free with Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited. I’m not going to change the genre of my book to fiction because it’s not fiction. Every story in my book is true, and I honestly don’t care if anyone doesn’t believe me because I know it’s true.

When I saw this image, I knew I wanted to make it into a pillow. Sure, I could put it in a frame and hang it somewhere, but I’d rather make it into a pillow so it has some function other than just something to look at. It’s not going to be a square pillow, it’s going to be the shape you see in the picture.

I asked the person who shared it if there was a pattern, but they shared it from another source, and honestly, how many sources has this been shared from? So I decided I’m not even going to bother finding the original source, I’m just going to copy it into my program Plastic Canvas Design Studio. It does stitches like / but it also does \ so I just used both stitches so I could get an X. And here it is. You may take the image and turn it into your own pillow, or if you would rather just make it and frame it, it’s your choice. But please don’t sell the image for profit.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mormon church officials have issued a rule change that says members in same-sex marriages can be kicked out and their children must wait until they’re 18 and disavow homosexual relationships to be baptized.

The revisions triggered a wave of anger, confusion and sadness for a growing faction of LGBT-supportive Mormons who were buoyed in recent years by church leaders’ calls for more compassion and understanding for LGBT members.

“It feels like they are extending an olive branch and hitting you with it,” said Wendy Montgomery, who is Mormon and has a 17-year-old gay son. “It’s like this emotional whiplash.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disseminated the handbook changes this week to local church leaders around the world. The goal was to provide clarity to lay leaders who run congregations, church spokesman Eric Hawkins said. He noted the church has long been on record as opposing same-sex marriages.

“While it respects the law of the land, and acknowledges the right of others to think and act differently, it does not perform or accept same-sex marriage within its membership,” Hawkins said in a statement.

Montgomery said Friday the news left her son sobbing and forced her and her husband to consider leaving a religion they’ve belonged to for generations. The couple has been trying desperately to stay in the church despite a harsh reception to their son coming out.

Montgomery also echoed a response shared by many on social media: She can somewhat understand the hard stance on same-sex marriage, but she can’t comprehend singling out gay couple’s children.

“We just put a scarlet letter on these kids,” Montgomery said. “This isn’t my church. I don’t see God in it. I don’t see divinity it. It just feels evil.”

I was a Mormon once upon a time, but I’m not even a Christian anymore, and with good reason. Christian churches hate gay people. Remember in the last couple of years when the Mormon church announced they are accepting gay people? Well, now they’ve slapped all those gay people in the face with this new rule saying they will be kicking out all gay members, and children of said gay people will not be allowed to be baptised or even attend church until they are 18, and they have to move out of their family home and disavow homosexuality, and that includes disavowing their parents.

Tell me how that is fair to a child? Tell me how that is fair to a family, like the Montgomery family who have been Mormons their entire lives. They used to live in Bakersfield and the church here gave them such a hard time, so much so that their son Jordan stopped going to church altogether. They were so excited to leave Bakersfield and move to a whole new city in a new state to be in a new community with a huge gay/gay friendly Mormon population, only to now be told that Jordan can’t attend church anymore because of this new rule.

Do the Mormons realize what they are doing? They are alienating not only gay people, but also the friends and families of gay people. It’s really no wonder why people are becoming atheists every day. This is exactly why I turned into an atheist.

When I was 17 and came out of the closet to my mother, all she could do was tell me “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” and that I was going to hell, and she called me a faggot. My own mother. My boyfriends mother called me a faggot and she also told me that she wanted to know where we lived so when God caused an earthquake, she’d know where to dig for her son’s corpse. Then when I was no longer homeless, my sister found me and invited me to live with her, and she started telling me how I was going to hell too. I went from being a born again Christian, to Atheist in less than a year. I had been told at least 100 times in 10 months that I was going to hell, and there was nothing I could do to change it. So yeah, I said screw that, I’m done with religion.

Look, I’m not going to tell people what to do with their lives. You can be a Mormon, you can be a Christian, or you can choose what religion you want to practice, but there is one thing you cannot choose, and that is to be gay. No one chooses to be gay. We don’t just wake up one morning and say “I think I might like to suck a dick today.” We may decide today is the day I will come out of the closet to my parents/family/friends, but we’ve always been gay. We came out of the womb gay, and we will die gay. You cannot change that fact. And I don’t care what anyone says, it’s not a choice. Deal with it.

If I ever decided to go to church, which will happen when hell freezes over, you can believe that I won’t give a crap what they think about my sexuality because it’s none of their business. I don’t think they should worry about who is gay and who is straight. They shouldn’t be focusing so much on hating gay people, because Jesus is not about hate. Jesus never said one thing about gay people, so why is the church so focused on hating gay people? Isn’t the church supposed to be all about love? I mean, that’s what I used to think. Now it seems the church is pure evil. If I wanted to go to an evil church, I’d choose the church of Satan. And you know what? I heard that the actual church of Satan actually accepts anyone, and they give food to the homeless and they donate money to charity. The church of Satan actually does a lot more good for society than the church of God. What does that tell you?

Anyway, I’m getting off my cross, er um I mean my soapbox. I’m sick of this subject. I wish all religions would just go away.

They say blood is thicker than water. Well, if that is true, why are so many parents kicking their LGBT children out of the house? Why are so many siblings burning their bridges over something trivial? Blood may be thicker than water, but you don’t have to be blood related to be family.

I was homeless when I was 15 and again when I was 17, and neither time was by choice. No one chooses to be homeless. There are children on the streets because their family gave up on them when they came out of the closet. Children are selling their bodies for sex so they can eat and have a roof over their heads. They are getting hooked on drugs, being raped and in most cases getting murdered because they are LGBT. Why is that, because they were gay? No, because their BLOOD tossed them into the streets to fend for themselves. Some are killing themselves because of the rejection.

Trust me when I say that blood is not thicker than water. Not just anyone can be your family, but that all depends on who YOU consider to be family. I have friends who I consider family more than my sisters and one cousin. I have a friend from when we lived in Van Nuys who I haven’t seen since 1981, but we are Facebook friends and I consider him more of a brother than I ever considered either of my sisters and my cousin. I have friends here in the Bakersfield gay community who I consider family. There is a family who just recently moved to Arizona who I barely got to know, and I consider them family more than my sisters and my cousin.

So just know that if you treat your own blood like crap, you may think that you are not replaceable, but trust me honey, you are. You need them more than they need you, so don’t treat your gay children, siblings or cousins like crap. If you never hear from them again, maybe think next time before you tell them they are going to hell, or in my cousins case, think before you tell them that you are voting for Prop 8 because he doesn’t think your relationship is worth a piece of paper.

I saw a post for an article on Facebook earlier today about a guy named Mike Melgaard who changed his Facebook avatar to a Target logo and changed his name to Ask ForHelp and was responding to people who were voicing their outrage about a new policy at Target to remove gender labels from the toy aisles. His responses were hilarious, and I have not laughed so hard in such a long time.

There were many hundreds of posts today made by people outraged by the news on Fox and Friends, but that’s what they do over at Fox News, they exaggerate and tell lies to make people mad enough to go over to the Target Facebook page and tell them they are boycotting.

This is what people who have been leaving comments think. They are saying it’s for political correctness. They think that Target is pandering to transgender children or parents or the gay and lesbian “agenda”, but that is simply not true. This is what they actually did. They removed the sign that says “Boys toys” and “Girls toys” and just have signs that say like, and this is just a guess, “Lego’s” and “Dolls” and “Barbie” and so on. All the boys and girls Lego’s are all in the same aisle. That’s it. I mean, how simple is that? They did the same with children’s bedding.

More than a few people have jumped from toys to bathrooms. They think that this has to do with transgender people, so they think Target is going to make the bathrooms gender neutral for transgender people. What does removing the words “boys” and “girls” from signs have to do with bathrooms? People, get your minds out of the gutter! Toys and toilets aren’t even in the same hemisphere. It’s not that slippery of a slope.

People say they are going to Walmart, well, here is some news for you, Walmart doesn’t have gender labels on their toy aisles, and neither does Toys R Us. That’s what the response has been from most everyone who has responded to these people. So by saying you are going to start shopping for toys at Walmart instead, well, I have some bad news for you.

Here’s the thing, children have their own sense of what kind of toys THEY want to play with. If you bring your child to Target and tell them to pick out a toy, the toy they choose is the toy that THEY want to play with. It’s that simple. I mean, I honestly don’t know how much more simple it can get.

If your son wants a Easy Bake Oven, are you going to say no, that’s for girls only, what is that telling your son? That cooking is only for girls? Ask Gordon Ramsey how he feels about that. My uncle does a lot of the cooking and my aunt works on the car. Are you going to tell my aunt and uncle that they have to switch gender roles?

When I was a kid, I had my own toys and my sister had her own toys, but I wanted to play with her toys because they seemed more fun. She had this one toy that was called Fashion Plates. It was a toy where you open the lid and place 3 plates in, 1 for the head, 1 for the torso and 1 for the legs. It could be a dress top with pant legs, or a blouse with a skirt. Here is a commercial I found on YouTube, but their description said Hasbro made these from 1989, but that’s wrong because my sister had her fashion plates in the 1970’s.

I loved to color, but I wasn’t very good at drawing, so it was nice to have something to make the pattern for me to color if I didn’t have any new coloring books. I colored a lot, and all of my coloring books were filled in. They didn’t have a boy version at that time, so I had to work with what my sister had.

My sister also had Donnie and Marie dolls complete with a TV studio set with cameras, microphones and outfits as well as the Cher dolls with the TV studio set and MANY outfits.

I had some cool toys too like Lego’s and I had a lot of Matchbox cars with a case and tracks. Oh and I had one of those electric racetracks that you have wired remote controls and you can press the button to make the cars go. Fun times. Oh, but I digress…

Look, kids want what kids want, and you can’t tell a child that they cannot play with a toy simply because it doesn’t match their genitalia. I mean, you’re the parent, you can raise your child however you want, but I’m telling you that if your child wants to play with toy X and you give them toy Z, be prepared for a lifetime of resentment and therapy. You can like what you like, but you aren’t the one who is going to reject a toy because that’s not what they wanted. It’s your money, throw it in the trash if you want to, I don’t care.

I had hours of fun playing with my Light Bright, Lego’s and Spirograph, which are gender neutral toys. I even had hours of fun playing with Donnie and Marie, which in my opinion should have been gender neutral toys, but because they were dolls, they were targeted to girls.

If you are boycotting Target because of this decision because you think this is a LGBT issue, let me give you some news. That computer, tablet or cell phone you are using right now was the invention of a gay person named Alan Turing. You will also be disappointed to know that Target is a gay friendly company. They sell gay pride clothing. Oh and Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple and Google (who owns Android) are all gay friendly companies. So next time you are using a computer, tablet or phone, just remember that you are using something invented by a gay person.

Today is a glorious day for LGBT Americans. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled the Defense of marriage act to be unconstitutional. That means that the federal government will recognize the marriage of all Americans, not only heterosexual marriages.

This is a huge step for humanity in my opinion. Although not everyone will agree with me because they believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. Love is love, period. It is none of anyone’s business who loves whom. Period, end of debate. It’s pretty arrogant for anyone to say that my 19 year relationship is less important than Kim Kardashian’s 72 day marriage to Kris Humphries.

We in California will not be able to get married for probably another month, if that, but I do believe that this will boost our bad economy since people will be buying wedding gifts for their friends who will finally be able to get married. So stock up on toasters and blenders while they are still on store shelves.